


The Hunger

by ziegler



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood, F/F, Gothic, Lesbian, Light Horror, Moicy, Moircy, Romance, Sexual Themes, Vampires, this was inspired by one of my fav books (carmilla)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 04:29:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16926531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziegler/pseuds/ziegler
Summary: On a dark winter's night, something tells Moira O'Deorain to go outside into the fog...and she finds someone there that gives her much more than she could have ever bargained for.





	The Hunger

The first time Moira O’Deorain sees her, she is little more than a figure in a November-time mist.

The moorlands of the mansion always did get obscured by the weather around this time of year. The fog was always so thick and unforgiving, rising up from the marshes in the distance, and if you ventured out into the treachery, you were usually lost until dawn. Sometimes, you didn’t always come back. There were plenty of things in the world that were a danger to humanity as it was. Spending a night out in a blanket of mist and swamp-water was a sure way to die from whatever lay beneath.

Moira O’Deorain had lost count of how many maids or servants had wandered there, in futile attempts to stay out until late. She had always asked them to pick the surrounding wildflowers that seemed to bloom all year round. Vivid purples and buttercup yellows, fluttering petals on towering stems; how Moira loved them so. _I really should stop asking them to decorate with those,_ she always thought, _but their beauty is almost too pleasing to miss_.

But this time, Moira isn’t interested in the wildflowers. She isn’t interested in the obscuring, thick fog, or the fact that there is the soft sound of a hysterical horse in the distance; hard, solid hooves clicking against a road, and a whip cracking loudly in the frosted air. No, Moira isn’t interested in any of those things. She is much more interested in the figure that remains before her.

She has no idea how much this figure is going to change her life.

Moira isn’t sure what really brought her outside on a night like this. As a baroness, she has no reason to ever leave the mansion unless she chooses to, or to save face with the higher-ups and top brass of political fame. All of her offhand maids, all of her dedicated servants, the motley workers around the rooms of her home all do everything she needs to be done. She needn’t lift a finger. The most her nights consist of usually is reading old science journals with a brandy and a freshly filled pipe; and why would one _want_ to go outside into the frost? She wasn’t sure. But something about tonight had driven her out of the familiar tapestry-clad hallways, and that same something had left her with a jaw agape, looking at the crouched over figure in the mist.

“Who’s there?” She asks cautiously. Her voice echoes off into nowhere; a ghost of a sound all that remains in the wisps of her breath. Her fists are curled into balls at her sides, and tugs at the edges of her blazer. “Show yourself!”

The figure collapses to the ground with a soft thump.

Moira gasps.

She runs across the crunching gravel; soft, damp pebbles beneath her boots as she runs to the person collapsed, and as the opaque fog gives way to her body, she begins to notice just what this figure is.

A _woman_.

“Are you alright?!” She insists; rushing over as quickly as her legs will carry her. “Answer me!”

Her hands tremble as she falls to her knees; pulling the woman into her arms. And, as the unconscious figure begins to become more apparent, she sees the face of the head that rests against her hands.

 _Beautiful_. A blonde woman with alabaster skin and a handsome face rests now in her embrace. Unconscious and vulnerable, she lays limp in Moira O’Deorain’s arms.

Moira feels her eyes widen in shock. It isn’t long before she is alerted to the fact that her yelling has drawn attention from the servants inside the house.

“Ma’am!”

“Are you quite alright, madam? What are you doing out here? It’s far too dangerous!”

The servants also begin to trail off when they see the body in Moira’s arms.

Moira turns her attention back to the blonde woman; brushing long, blonde strands out of her closed eyes. She looks delicate, fragile, as though someone had just discarded her without a second thought on Moira’s doorstep.

“Prepare a bed,” Moira demands. “At once!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

The servants are obedient to a fault. Moira lifts the woman up in her arms. _She’s far too light for it to be normal._

This is the first time that Moira O’Deorain meets the woman that will change her life forever. She doesn’t know it, at first. She hurries back inside the large mansion; a full blast of warmth from a roaring fireplace hitting her in the face, she realizes that her shock has allowed her to ignore the biting frost from the outside. The material of her clothes feel cold, and her thin lips feel blue. The woman in her arms somehow looks even paler in the orange glimmer from the fire.

Moira lays her before the fireplace. _The bed won’t be ready yet,_ she thinks, _and I must warm her._ _She’s colder than a tomb. It was definitely a cold night tonight, but this almost feels deathly._

The blonde woman lays idle against the patterned carpet. Moira’s slender fingers coil around her hands.

For a moment, Moira does think that this woman is dead. Coupled with her freezing temperature, her skin looks as though she could be little more than a corpse in this light.

 _Who are you?_ She thinks. _How did you end up here?_

It isn’t long until the servants return to the living room. The bedroom is ready. This woman, whoever she is, is now in Moira O’Deorain’s charge.

Two days pass with no progress on her condition. Moira watches over her for as many moments as she can. The servants and maids are all surprised at her candour.

On the night of the second day, during a rare moment where Moira is out of the room, the stranger wakes up almost the entire mansion with a bloodcurdling scream.  

Moira rushes to the room in an intrigued haste, and she sees her; the blonde woman that she thought was little more than a corpse; now fully animated and terrified inside the dimly-lit surroundings. The sheets are skewed, the vase of wildflowers next to her bed rattling from almost falling over; and her blonde hair is sticking to her brow in a cold sweat. Her eyes are a pale, manic blue, with her expression grim and terrified. She is looking around wildly, almost accusingly, at the redhead woman before her.

“Where am I?!” She demands. “Who are you?!”

“Calm yourself,” Moira replies sharply. The blonde woman shakes in her heavy set hysteria. “Calm. I am Moira O’Deorain. I found you unconscious outside of my home.”

The moonlight streams in from behind the curtains of the guest room’s window. The blonde woman tries to calm her attitude.

“Unconscious?” she finally manages to choke out.

“Yes,” Moira says gently. “Do you not remember anything about before you ended up here?”

The blonde woman pauses for a moment. Her manic eyes fall to the ground. Moira can tell she’s recalling something, or at the very least, trying to. Her hands writhe and rub at her neck, and her upper arms look bruised, as though she fell from a great height or was shoved out of something.

She shakes her head, swallowing down her emotions, and folds her trembling arms.

“No,” she replies flatly. Moira raises an eyebrow.

“Not one thing?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Moira pauses. The blonde woman refuses to look at her.

“…Alright. As you wish.” Moira concedes. “But I would very much like to know your name.”

The blonde woman stood before her is calmer now, almost as though Moira’s words are tethering her back to the earth from the Hell she seems to have gone through. The guest room smells like old books and fresh linen, and Moira can see that the blonde before her is trying her best to breathe in the smell. Her eyelids flicker gently against the blue of her eyes.

“…Angela,” she says quietly. “My name is Angela.”

Moira allows the name to burn into her mind like a brand.

“Angela…” she repeats softly. Both women notice that as soon as Angela’s eyes meet with Moira’s properly for the first time, they stand locked in a gaze so intense neither of them move for several minutes.

One week passes after Angela’s awakening, and stranger things begin to happen around the mansion. The staff report unusual dreams; Moira herself wakes up several times in bed in a cold sweat, and finds herself dreaming of sharing a kiss with her strange guest.

But perhaps the strangest of all is that Moira herself feels as though she is forming an attachment.

As a baroness, Moira has many responsibilities to this small section of the country. With her mansion on the outskirts of a tiny village, most of the residents look up to her, and she knows it. Gifted at medicine from an early age, her family propelled her into success. And she knows that for many of the residents here in this isolated town, her medical knowledge is something that they can only dream of, and luckily for them – or so they think – she gives it to them at a very reasonable price. What they do _not_ know, however, is that Moira is more than willing to test out her own theories on their bodies. So far, she has not encountered a casualty. For that, she is both smug and proud.

Moira O’Deorain is not inherently gentle. She is not someone warm enough to encourage a stranger staying in her house at length; and she is not someone who spends her time mollycoddling those who are in a rough spot. Moira O’Deorain is intelligent, dedicated, and ruthlessly busy.

So why is Angela taking up all of her time?

Moira finds herself fascinated endlessly at her behaviour. She looks forward to every moment she catches a glimpse of the mysterious beauty residing in her house. The daydreams of their kisses, the moments she seizes to be in Angela’s presence. Moira is equally fascinated by Angela’s behaviour as she is by her own; but Angela’s actions are definitely unusual.

She doesn’t emerge from her bedroom until the break of dusk each day; something that has gotten earlier and earlier as daylight fades from the gentler grip of Autumn and into the frosty palm of Winter. Each time Moira visits the guest room, there is a new book taken off of the shelves inside of it. And every time Moira seemed to catch Angela outside of her room, she is always looking at her rather guiltily.

“Angela,” she asks gently on the third day of her stay. “Why do you look at me in such a way?”

“Such a way?” Angela replies curiously.

The same look resides in her eyes as she speaks. Guilt.

“Yes. You look as though you have done something to displease me.”

Angela shakes her head.

She walks a little closer to Moira as she talks. It excites both of them.

“No,” Angela says gently, fiddling with the hem of her white dress. “I just feel ashamed that I had you rescue me from the outside world. I haven’t been able to do anything to repay you, and still, you let me stay. You are so kind, Moira…”

“Kind?” Moira says incredulously as they stand in the hallway. The oil lamps flicker around them.

Angela moves closer. She smells divine.

“Yes. You allow me to stay here and benefit from your lifestyle, don’t you?”

Moira finds her breath grow shallow as Angela takes another step closer. There is a rush up her spine of delight. Her lips tingle with desire.

“Well…” Moira attempts to say with composure. “You are welcome to stay for as long as you wish.”

Angela’s blue eyes change from guilt to delight in almost a split second. Moira feels her heart flutter.

“Truly?” She says in a tone of happiness that Moira is first privy to. _Her voice is beautiful_ , Moira thinks; tinged with a foreign accent of some kind, she finds herself wanting to hear more of her. She needs to hear more of her. Angela takes Moira by the hands. “Oh, Moira…what would I be doing without you now, I wonder?”

Angela’s hands are still freezing cold. Moira is shocked at the touch.

She holds Angela’s hands firmly in her own.

_You are fascinating, my Angela. Just what are you?_

“…Indeed.”

As the days pass, the servants of the mansion begin to notice Moira O’Deorain becoming more absent than ever.

She is reclusive from the mansion’s rooms. The fireplace seat in the living room is continually unoccupied; the brandy remains undrunk, and the wildflowers are dying in the vases around. She does nothing more with her time now since meeting Angela than attempt to spend all of her time around her.

As November turns to a snowy December, rumours begin to circulate.

“There’s something not right with that girl…” one of the servants says to the other as they stand in the kitchen. Pots and pans bang and clatter around them, and the sweet smell of marinated meat reaches their nostrils. “Don’t you think?”

“Yes, I agree…” the other replies, folding her arms as she leans against a wall. “She’s too pale. Far too ghostly! And just who is she to earn Miss O’Deorain’s respect in such a way? If all it took to get the Miss to look at me like that, well, I’d of passed out in the fog months ago!”

“It is unlike anything I have ever seen,” a third servant says as they enter the kitchen. “I just came from there.”

The two servants eyeball the silver tray the third is carrying. A collective gasp comes from their lips after a moment of realization.

“Well I never! She allowed Angela to use the best silverware in the house!” the first servant says. “But doesn’t she never eat anything?”

The third servant nods.

“They used the goblets for drinks. And if I may…well, this must never leave this room,” they say in a hushed tone. “But…I think Miss O’Deorain is quite infatuated with our new resident.”

Moira doesn’t care about the rumours. And what can she even do about them if they are correct?

She _is_ infatuated.

Night quickly becomes Moira’s favourite time of day. When she finds herself weary, she also finds Angela laying in the bed next to her. She looks beautiful in the moonlight, laying with her blonde hair drooping against Moira’s chest wordlessly, and stroking a circle against the exposed parts of her neck protruding from beneath a white collar.

The intimacy was sudden, but not unwelcome; and to both women, it felt unavoidable. Natural. Their relationship was moving at such an alarming rate that neither could deny the certainty the other felt. A pull, a magnetism, a chemistry forged in gold that neither could shake the shackles of. Moira was fascinated by Angela’s strange habits, and Angela found Moira to be the woman that had saved her from a certain death.

As they lay against the soft press of the guest room’s blankets, Moira pulls Angela’s cold body against hers.

“Come out with me tomorrow,” she asks. “To the town.”

Angela doesn’t reply at first. Moira allows herself to feel the tingle of delight from the sensation of Angela’s frozen fingertip encircling her collarbone.

“I can’t,” she finally replies.

“Why not?”

“I am afraid of what might happen to me, should I do such a thing.”

Moira raises an eyebrow at her unusual phrasing. Angela refuses to look at her. Her lips have begun to get subtly closer to Moira’s neck.

“But -”

Angela doesn’t say anything, but instead presses her lips to Moira’s neck after what feels like an age. Moira immediately forgets what she is saying.

Angela’s lips are just as cold as her fingertips. _Icy_. Moira knows it is unnatural. Everything about her lover’s body is cold. The touch of her tongue that now slips against her skin, the feel of her thigh that rests across her hips as they lay. She knows it isn’t right. But something about the woman at her side makes her not care about finding out, either.

They make love for the first time that night. Their kisses are passionate, their touches unmeasurable in their devotion to one another. The sheets slip against their bodies, and Moira doesn’t know how this happened. She doesn’t know how she ever went a day forwards in life without the sense of love in her heart. The infatuation is more than a crush. In fact, Moira is certain that is more than love. Obsession.

Every time they make love together after that; every time Moira and Angela allow their bodies to melt into one another; Moira always wakes up exhausted. Angela is always sound asleep when she wakes, and Moira notices that with each time they sleep, Angela’s colour returns to her cheeks a little more.

Moira feels as though her body is aching, and the look in Angela’s eyes of guilt returns at least once every day. A pattern of this becomes routine for almost a week.

The servants are worried sick. Moira feels a sensation that she cannot put into words.

It feels as though the life and soul are leaving her body as she exists. Angela’s look of guilt grows more and more each day, but the two women still find themselves completely in love with each other.

Angela is the one holding Moira’s hands now, tight and loving in her own beneath the sheets. Red and blonde hairs are intermingled together in a mess against the pillows, and legs are entangled. Moira has grown to love the cold.

“My love,” Angela asks as they lay in bed together. Moira pulls her closer to her. “Do you want to be together forever?”

Moira blinks in surprise at the boldness of the question being put forth to her. Angela’s slender fingertips rustle their ways through the fire-red locks of her lover’s hair.

It occurs to Moira O’Deorain for the first time that, since they met, she has never considered a future without Angela. Her response is firmly etched in stone.

“I want you to never leave my side.”

“Do you mean that?” Angela asks immediately, and Moira sees the guilt she hates in Angela’s eyes again. “Truly?”

“My darling…” Moira says with a weak tone of voice. “I want to live forever with you.”

The look of guilt remains for one second longer, before it fades completely.

Moira feels as though she has vanquished such a thought from her lover’s mind of anything causing her grief.

Angela’s full lips curve into a brilliant smile. Moira’s heart skips a beat.

“Darling…” she says with a whisper; and cups Moira’s face in her palms. The moonlight of winter outside glistens through. “You have no idea just how truly elated I am to hear you say that.”

The servants downstairs have no idea that Moira O’Deorain is about to lose her human life in favour for an eternal one.

As Angela’s teeth begin to sink into Moira O’Deorain’s neck, Moira finally begins to piece together all of the things she has found fascinating about Angela. The searing pain doesn’t bother her as the realizations flood to her mind.

A vampire. That was what Angela was. A vampire sent to her through the fog that night.

The sheer lack of a strong pulse, the fair, pale skin; the instant attraction, the otherworldly devotion, the mysterious arrival on her doorstep. Moira knew that Angela was something that could not be contained by the human world. The frosty touch of her body was enough to attest to that.

Moira feels a warm pool of blood trickling down beneath her neck. Angela is crying as she bites down.

She leans back slightly, her mouth covered in crimson, and strokes Moira’s face gently.

“Are you not curious?” Angela asks through the salt of her tears and the copper of her lover’s blood. “Are you truly not going to ask me anything?”

Moira’s eyes begin to close slowly. The pain is dulled a little through the numbness of a life fading.

“Angela…” she says weakly. “I will have an eternity to find out about you, will I not?”

Angela is taken aback by the calibre of woman before her; and finishes the job quickly of making sure that Moira O’Deorain is just like her in as painless of a way as she possibly can.

It takes two days for Moira to awaken fully.

Angela has never been as happy in the afterlife as she has when she sees the full, slender figure of Moira O’Deorain reborn.

For Moira’s servants, they are quickly dismissed, and are all too glad to be leaving the mansion that has rapidly changed underneath their care. Strange things were happening far too often in the night, they reported, saying that they kept on having dreams about the blonde stranger taking their blood in their sleep, in large vials or glass bottles, stashing them away for later.

 _We’re only too glad to be leaving,_ they had all collaboratively said to their former boss. _We will leave you and this strange woman to your machinations._

And now, inside the house of O’Deorain, Moira is now more than just a baroness. She is more powerful than she has ever felt in her life. In death, she is the woman she always wanted to be; and also in death, she is with the only woman that has ever made her feel any semblance of infatuation.

Moira’s hand cups Angela’s face; and Angela kisses the palm that rests against her cheek.

“Angela…” she mumbles with a smile. “I cannot wait to see what the future holds for you and I. We have transcended the boundaries of humanity…you are truly a remarkable woman.”

Angela smiles into the cusp of Moira’s hands around her face; and, with gleeful, loving eyes looking up at her lover; she says,

“To be pulled out of the fog and into your arms was the greatest gift of all.”

**Author's Note:**

> if you enjoyed this, then i'm happy to say i just finished writing my first game as part of Noodletub Games - and it's out on Steam right now! it's called The Ghost of You. if you want to sink your teeth into a suspense-horror-love story about an entirely lesbian cast, then please check it out [here](https://noodletub.tumblr.com/post/181306988281/the-ghost-of-you-out-now-on-steam)! thank you so much! ♥


End file.
